Under conditions of this sort, the standards of living were clearly not very high, and death from any number of causes was common.

Certainly it was indeed true that children's lives were particularly apt to be snuffed out prematurely by disease, and the death rate among children was very high. 

Families were commonly large in part because it was by no means certain that one's offspring would make it to adulthood to care for their aging parents, if by chance those parents had survived that long as well.

Life was, to turn a phrase -- short and brutish.

Nobility and royalty had to be sure advantages not shared by commoners.  But even those advantages did not lead to cleanliness.

Vermin (lice, fleas, ticks, cockroaches, mice, and rats) plagued the lives of rich and poor alike. 

While the rich might afford to buy perfume to mask the unpleasant odors of their infrequently-washed bodies, even they intched from the bites of unpleasant things crawling upon their persons, in their clothes, and in their beds.

Among the lower classes, hair grew long, remained uncombed, and was rarely washed.  A person might only wash if he got caught in the rain or fell into a stream.  Deliberately bathing more than once a year was almost unheard of.

In view of such a general lack of sanitation and the prevalence of contagion, what is remarkable is not the death rate, but the survival rate!

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